Kagome's Assumptions
by Beast of Waste and Desolation
Summary: Because all heros have to have a fatal flaw, and Kagome happens to put complete faith in whatever she wants to believe. But she's traveling with a half-demon and he doesn't happen to do what she wants very often. Slightly AU


Every hero has a fatal flaw, and since Kagome is the heroine—has to be the heroine because why else would she have been transported through time and been able to release a dangerous half-demon who will help her fight a psychotic antagonist of the same breed—she has one too. And for a while she doesn't know what it is because everyone has little flaws, right? Because while she is a little loud and a little weak, loses her temper too often, and is sometimes a little vain and arrogant, those flaws aren't that major, certainly aren't major enough to be considered _fatal_.

But she continues to travel with Inuyasha and though he is definitely _not human_ she believes he is also _somewhat human_ and so her life falls into a pattern of homesickness and bickering and fighting that she feels kind of comfortable with. She does not love this past, and certainly knows that this past does not love her, but they have settled into a truce of sorts. They kill demons. They save victims. They get closer—and yet farther—from their goal.

And then, maybe a couple weeks into this new time where she has finally gotten to the stage where she does not think about the feel of the priestess' robes she is wearing and the bow on her back, they are ambushed by a group of human bandits. The leader swaggers and leers and threatens and boasts, and Inuyasha doesn't give them a second glance as he slaughters them as easily—no, _easier_—than he does to the demons they have encountered before.

But they _are _different from the demons because they are—were—human and though they were disgusting examples of humanity Kagome could still sort of connect with them. And while she falls to her knees, vomiting uncontrollably into the pooling blood—same as the blood in her veins and just as easily spilled—Inuyasha views her apathetically and licks the red off of his claws.

When she finally stops heaving Inuyasha gets up from where he was reclining against a tree and asks, "You done?" It's like he's asking if she's finished drinking water from a water fountain, something so completely mundane that it doesn't elicit any second thought.

She looks up and meets his gold demon eyes and croaks out unattractively, "You killed them."

Inuyasha watches her for a few minutes before sighing and sitting back down because she's obviously not going anywhere for a while.

"Yeah," he says, voice low and silky and arrogant and _not human_. "I did. You have seen me kill before."

"Not humans," she says and she's not disgusted anymore—okay, she still is and she won't stop being so anytime soon, but that's not the most important emotion right now—she's angry and getting angrier. "You're not supposed to kill _humans._ You kill _demons._ Humans can't hope to accomplish anything against a demon, and you just slaughtered them without mercy! Just like that! They're _dead _now." And she's standing now; full of righteous anger, and Inuyasha just looks at her like she's some overreacting little _brat_.

"I kill demons, too." He says. "Not like I am playing favorites." Kagome shrieks _sit!_ and feels a sadistic satisfaction in seeing him crash into the ground without any of his normal gracefulness.

Inuyasha gets back up and looks at her, now with contempt, and Kagome can't help but take a step or two back because Inuyasha has white hair and gold eyes and fangs and humans don't have those.

"Listen, _Kagome_. I do not see what your problem is. I kill demons. You kill demons. Hell,_ everybody _freaking kills demons. And so why is it considered a crime to kill humans, who would have killed us if I had not? It was self-defense. I kill demons in self-defense, and I don't particularly care about killing either. Demons are _much_ more powerful that humans. They are so much _greater_. So why is it thought cruel to kill humans, who kill demons, while it is not thought to be so when you kill demons that kill humans. Greater demons are not allowed to kill humans because it is unmoral, while lesser humans may kill demons because that is justice. What sort of reasoning, what sort of _flawed _logic, is that?"

Inuyasha is towering over her, vibrant and dangerous and leaking some sort of intent that makes her shake and want to grovel, and she—in a moment of irrelevant thought—finally realizes what her fatal flaw is.

Inuyasha, the half-demon, whirls around and stalks away without waiting for a retort, muscles coiling and taught, and Kagome follows through the shredded corpses. She thinks that she will prevent herself from protesting out loud when Inuyasha kills humans who want to kill or hurt or do something unmentionable to them, but she does not—will never let herself—understand his reasoning because when she sees demons she sees something not like her, but she sees her friends and parents and acquaintances in the faces of the dead humans.

Kagome's fatal flaw, she realizes, is that of assumption, because she takes for granted, no doubt in her mind, whatever she wants to believe. Because in-between the syllables of half-demon, she heard half-human. Because though Inuyasha has sharp claws and unnatural grace and can kill her before she notices that he has moved, she thinks—she thought—she could connect with him, could become friends with him. The rosary necklace puts them on even ground, she thinks.

But Inuyasha is not in the least bit human, because he can slaughter humans without thinking, _this could be me._ And he is not in the least bit demonic, because he can slaughter demons without thinking, _I could somehow be related to them_. He is a half-demon and a half-human and both of those together make something even more dangerous, because he has no loyalties. Scorned by both, neither one nor the other.

Kagome has a fatal flaw because she is the heroine. But her companion is not the hero, nor the antagonist, but the quintessence of the term anti-hero, and he is made of so many flaws he has none at all.


End file.
